A debate on religious pluralism

I had another debate with the same guy who debated me on whether Christianity was the one true religion. This time, he framed the debate as Religious Pluralism vs. Christian Exclusivism. He went first, defending religious pluralism. Here is my opening statement in response:

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That was a well-written opening! Let's pause and give that man a hand! Now let's sit back down and refute his arguments. :-)

This is my argument in a nut shell.

1. If religious pluralism is true, then all major religions are more or less true.
2. If all religions are more or less true, then Christianity is more or less true.
3. If Christianity is more or less true, then Islam is more or less false.
4. If Islam is more or less false, then not all major religions are more or less true.
5. Therefore, if religious pluralism is true, then religious pluralism is false.

In other worlds, religious pluralism is self-refuting. Now let me defend these premises.

1. If religious pluralism is true, then all major religions are more or less true.

This premise is true by the definition Pro gave of religious pluralism. He said all major religions are equally valid interpretations of the same divine reality. His use of the word "reality" implies that there is some truth behind these various interpretations. So all religious must be true under this definition of pluralism.

2. If all religions are more or less true, then Christianity is more or less true.

This second premise is true because Christianity is a religion.

3. If Christianity is more or less true, then Islam is more or less false.

One of the essential claims of Christianity is that Jesus is the unique son of God and is equal with God the father. One of the essential claims of Islam is that God has no equal and has no son.

Pro anticipated this argument when he said that "Religious Pluralism does NOT mandate that every part of every religion is true." The problem with his response is that he fails to make a distinction between essential teachings and non-essential teachings. Christians differ amongst themselves on a variety of issues, and so do Muslims. However, there are a few teachings that define what Christianity is and what Islam is such that if you remove those teachings, you no longer have Christianity or Islam, respectively.

For example, if Jesus doesn't return before the great tribulation, then Christianity could still be true. But if Jesus is not the son of God, then Christianity cannot be true because Jesus being the son of God is an essential teaching of Christianity.

The fact that Christianity and Islam differ in their non-essential teachings does not mean they can't both be true. However, the fact that they differ on essential teachings does mean they cannot both be true. Jesus is either God or he's not God. If he's God, then Islam is false. If he's not God, then Christianity is false. But under no circumstances can they both be true.

4. If Islam is more or less false, then not all major religions are more or less true.

This premise is true because Islam is one of the major religions.

5. Therefore, if religious pluralism is true, then religious pluralism is false.

This follows from 1-4 by the transitive property.

Now, I need not prove that Christianity is true since Pro subscribes to religious pluralism. To be consistent, he must already acknowledge that Christianity is true. If he denies that Christianity is true, then he must deny religious pluralism since Christianity is one of the major religions.

So the only question is whether Christianity is exclusively true.

Pro thinks that the only argument for the exclusivity of Christianity is the explicit statements of exclusivity in the Bible. But that is false. There is also the argument from the law of non-contradiction, which Pro unsuccessfully attempted to address. The essential claims of Christianity are these:

1. There is one and only one God.
2. God imposes moral obligations on people.
3. People disobey their moral obligations.
4. God punishes people for their moral violations.
5. Jesus is the Christ.
6. Jesus died to pay for our moral violations.
7. Jesus was raised from the dead.

If any of these are false, then Christianity is false. But since Pro agrees that Christianity is true (to be consistent with his pluralism), then he cannot deny any of these claims without giving up his religious pluralism.

If Jesus is the Christ, then Judaism is false.

If There is only one God, then Hinduism is false.

If God imposes moral obligations on people, then Buddhism is false.

If Jesus died to pay for our moral violations, then Islam is false.

And those are all the major religions. It follows that if Christianity is true (which Pro must agree it is), it follows that it is the only major religion that is true, and therefore Christian exclusivism is true.

Now let me address one last argument Pro made against the exlusivity of Christianity. He claims that it violates the concept of an all-loving God.

As a side note, In Islam, God is not all-loving. Pro stipulated that "For the purposes of this debate, we'll be assuming the existence of an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God." That very stipulation refutes religious pluralism.

Anyway, the reason Pro thinks Christian exlusivity violates the concept of an all-loving God is that it entails that billions of people will be damned through no fault of their own since they had no control over where they were born or what religion they were born into.

This argument fails for two reasons. First, it fails because the damnation of all these people is not an essential claim of Christianity. He already acknowledge earlier that religious pluralism does not entail that every part of a religion is true. The Catholic Church denies the claim that all non-Christians are damned. So Pro's premise is false.

But even if Pro's premise (that all non-Christians are damned), it would still not follow that people are damned through no fault of their own. Notice the essential claims of Christianity I listed above. The claim of Christianity isn't that people are damned because they didn't convert to Christianity. Rather, the claim is that they are damned because of their moral violations. One does not need to be a Christian (or to even have knowledge of Christianity) in order to know right from wrong. So it isn't true that non-Christians in various parts of the world are damned throug no fault of their own. They are at fault because they know right from wrong, and they do wrong. Everybody violates their moral obligations. Nobody is perfect. If there WERE a perfect person out there somewhere, then that person would not be damned.

So Pro's argument against Christian exclusivity is fallacious on two counts.

Christianity is the one true religion: a succinct argument for Christianity

I recently finished writing a book I'm calling A Quick and Dirty Argument for Christianity. It's a short and truncated version of a larger book I'm still working on that I plan to call An Argument for Christianity. Actually, the quick and dirty book still needs editing, so I guess it's not really finished. I'm just finished with the first draft.

Anywho, I have thought about writing an even shorter book I might call A Quicker and Dirtier Argument for Christianity, or An Argument for Christianity In a Nutshell or something. Anyway, I was looking on The Wayback Machine for a debate I had on debate.org a long time ago, and I stumbled across a debate where my opponent wanted me to try to prove that Christianity is the one true religion. In this debate, I gave an even shorter argument for Christianity than what I planned in that quicker and dirtier book. This is about as succinct as I think I've ever made the argument for Christianity. Here's my opening statement.

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This is probably an impossible debate for me to win because it requires me to prove so much and for Con to prove so little. But I thought it would be fun.

My argument in a nutshell:

1. If Christianity is true, then it is the one true religion.
2. Christianity is true.
3. Therefore, Christianity is the one true religion.

1. If Christianity is true, then it is the one true religion.

According to the law of non-contradiction, two claims that contradict each other cannot both be true at the same time and in the same sense. All religions contradict each other, which is how we distinguish them. So if Christianity is true, then all other religions must be false. So if Christianity is true, then it's the one true religion.

2. Christianity is true.

What is Christianity?

This is what I take Christianity to be essentially:

i. There is a god.
ii. The god imposes moral obligations on people.
iii. People violate those moral obligations.
iv. God judges people for violating their moral obligations.
v. Jesus is the Christ.
vi. Jesus died for sins.
vii. Jesus was raised from the dead.

I said earlier that my burden in this debate is far greater than Con's. While I've got to prove all seven of those points, Con only has to disprove one. If all seven are true, then Christianity is true. If just one of them is false, then Christianity is false.

The reality of morality

Whether we affirm or deny morality, we all percieve it as if it were real, which is evident in the following observations:

We all judge others as if others are actually obligated to keep the moral view that we hold to.

When judged, our first instinct is not to deny the reality of the standard we are being judged by, but to give excuses for why we didn't violate that standard.

We struggle with moral dilemmas. Moral decision making is difficult because there really are correct answers to moral questions, and we have to find out what they are.

Moral non-realists are rarely consistent. People generally live consistently with what they actually believe, so people who deny morality are just kidding themselves.

We all find moral non-realism to be counter-intuitive. We all think it's prima facie absurd to suggest that morals could have been radically different. For example, it's absurd to think it could've been the case that mother stabbing and father raping are morally right, and kindness and generosity are evil.

Now, consider a person who does not percieve a difference between right and wrong at all. Would we not consider such a person to be mentally ill? Would we not attach such lables as "sociopath" to a person like that? Well, if there isn't really a difference between right and wrong, then such people are seeing the world more accurately than we are. While we all percieve a difference between right and wrong that isn't actually there, the mentally ill are percieving the world as it actually is. If that is the case, shouldn't we consider them sane and ourselves as mentally ill?

If a correctly working mind is a mind that percieves things that are really there and doesn't percieve things that aren't there, and if sociopathy really is a mental illness, then it follows that morality is real. There actually is a difference between right and wrong, and it isn't just in our heads.

The implication of morality

Rules of right and wrong are prescriptive. That is, rather than merely describe how people behave, they prescribe how people ought to behave. Prescriptions cannot exist without prescribers because without some authority, there are no rules. Since it's possible for there to be unjust civil laws, it follows that the moral law transcends human authorities. That means there is a transcendent authority who imposes moral obligations on us. We will come back to this shortly.

The argument from contingency

The only way it's possible for anything contingent to exist is if something necessary exists. To be contingent means it possible for it to have not existed. Since contingent things don't exist by necessity, they depend on something outside of themselves for their existence.

But consider the borrower/lender analogy. Suppose you need to borrow something from your neighbor, but he doesn't have it. So he asks his neighbor who doesn't have it either. The only way it's possible for you to get what you're after is if somebody has it who doesn't have to get it from somebody else.

In the same way, the only way it's possible for anything at all to exist is if there's something that exists that didn't get its existence from something else. Such a thing would be a necessary being.

Since obviously lots of things exist, then it must be the case that a necessary being exists, and everything else owes its existence ultimately to the necessary being.

Consider the two arguments together

Now, consider these two arguments. One shows that a necessary being exists, and the other shows that a transcendent moral law-giver exists. It may not be obvious that these two beings are the same being, but when you consider how nicely they compliment each other, it seems reasonable to believe they are the same being.

We know that no mere human is sufficient to impose moral obligations on us, nor is any concievable alien that exists in the universe. But if there were a creator who existed necessarily and was absolutely autonomous, then it's hard to think of a better candidate for a being that is sufficient to ground morality. This would literally be that being's world. So it makes a lot of sense to think that the transcendent moral law-giver is one and the same as the necessary ground of the rest of existence.

If there is a necessarily existing person who is the ground of morality, then we are clearly justified in referring to such a being as a god. But we have still not proven that it is the same person as the Christian God.

Jesus

That brings us to Jesus. Jesus was a Jewish man who lived in the first century, claimed to be the Christ, and got crucified. Now, any Jew in his right mind would've taken Jesus' crucifixion is absolute proof that Jesus' claim to be the Christ was false. After all, the hope for a Christ was a hope that God would fulfill his promise to David, and that promise was that there would always be a man on the throne of David. So the Christ was to be a king of the Jews, and that meant national sovereignty, and that meant no Roman occupation. That's why messianic hope was so high in the first century. The hope was in deliverence from Roman occupation. So if the Romans killed the supposed Christ, that proves he isn't the Christ.

Yet Christianity survived the death of Jesus. The only possible way Jews could've continued to believe Jesus was the Christ is if they had some reason to think he was still alive and could therefore fulfill all the messianic promises. And that is exactly what Jesus' early followers claimed. Moreover, they claimed to have seen him alive after he had died. These appearances are apparently what caused them to believe since the record shows that they lost hope after Jesus died, which is what we would expect them to do. Also, Paul and James both converted because they saw Jesus resurrected. When you consider these appearances along with the empty tomb, it becomes apparent that Jesus really did rise from the dead. Without the resurrection, we have no viable explanation for the survival of Christianity.

Now, either Jesus really was who he claimed to be, or else it's just a big coincidence that he would rise from the dead by some freak of nature after making such unusual claims. So the more rational conclusion is that he really was the Christ sent from God. And that entails that the Christian God exists.

It also entails that Christ died for sins, which entails that God judges people for their sins and that people do in fact sin.

3. Therefore, Christianity is the one true religion

Since all the essential claims of Christianity are true, and since all other religions contradict Christianity in some way, it follows that Christianity is the one true religion.

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There are a lot of points I made in this opening statement that I've discussed in more detail in earlier posts, so I thought I'd provide some links in case you're interested.

The Arrogance Fallacy - This is about the mistake a lot of people make in critizing some claims because it's arrogant to believe them as if that had something to do with whether they are true.

I'm right, and you're wrong - This post is similar to the one before. It explains why making exclusive truth claims is logical and has nothing to do with arrogance.

The law of non-contradiction - It may seem silly to have to defend the law of non-contradiction, but I wrote this post because of having to defend it in some of my philosophy classes in college.

What is Christianity? - This is an explanation of how I came up with the seven points I thought captured the core of Christianity.

A quick and dirty argument for moral realism - This post goes into my argument for moral realism in more detail but also provides links to even more detail on the various points.

Why theism is necessary and sufficient to ground objective moral obligations - Just what the title suggests, plus links to more detailed posts.

The god of the philosophers vs. the Abrahamic God - This post goes into more detail about how various philosophical arguments for God compliment each other in such a way as to point toward the Abrahamic God.

Is the universe contingent? - This post explains why I doubt the universe itself is necessary, which is why we have to look to something beyond the universe to explain why anything at all exists.

A quick and dirty argument for the resurrection of Jesus - Just what the title suggests.

How does the resurrection of Jesus prove that he is the messiah? - This post explains how.

Misconceptions about the pro-life position

I've been watching Breaking Points since Krystal and Saagar left Rising to start it. I watched them on Rising before that. Although I do disagree with them pretty often, I find their commentaries refreshing sometimes. A big part of what they are about is shunning the divisiveness and lack of fairness and objectivity of legacy news organizations. Krystal is a liberal/progressive, and Saagar is a conservative, and they sometimes disagree with each other. But at least they allow both sides to be heard. Each of them will also critize politicians who happen to be on their side, which I also appreciate.

One issue Saagar is not conservative on is abortion. He's pro-choice. My suspicion is that most republican politicians are probably either secretly pro-choice or they just don't care about the issue. They're politicians, so they just do what politicians do, which is to support the team and say whatever they must to get elected. Although I disagree with Saagar's pro-choice stance, I appreciate that he's honest about his position.

The pro-life position has never, as far as I've known, gotten a fair hearing on their show. Today, Ryan and Saagar put out a video clip where they were talking about a video clip where Bill Maher said he agrees with pro-lifers that abortion is murder, but he's okay with that. After commenting on the video, Ryan and Saagar began to perpetuate two myths pro-choice people have about the pro-life position. I left comments about both.

One myth is that the pro-life position is strictly a religious point of view. I've met a lot of pro-choice people who are under this impression. Here's the comment I left about that:

Ryan and Saagar are both perpetuating the myth that the pro-life position is strictly a religious position. If it were, there wouldn't be such a thing as the Secular Pro-Life organization. While most pro-lifers probably are religious, and many of them have religious reasons for being pro-life, the primary argument made by the movement is entirely secular. The argument is simply that (1) It's wrong to take the life of an innocent human being, (2) abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, (3) therefore, it's wrong to have an abortion. Almost everybody agrees with that first premise (except maybe Bill Maher), so the issue comes down to whether or not abortion takes the life of an innocent human being, and THAT depends on whether or not it's a living human being to begin with. The primary defense of the fact that the unborn are living human beings is biology, not theology. There is so much ignorance on the part of the pro-choice community on this issue.

The second myth is that the pro-life movement is about controlling women, supporting the patriarchy, etc. Here's the comment I left about that:

3:44 "It [the pro-life position] is a fundamental part of upholding the patriarchy. And I think even most pro-life supporters would acknowledge that." Where on earth does he get that idea? I've met a ton of pro-life supporters, and I've never met a single one who would acknowledge that. Being pro-life has absolutely nothing to do with the patriarchy, or controlling women, or anything like that. It has simply to do with the life of the unborn. Until pro-choicers stop making stuff up and motive-mongering, they're not addressing the real issue. You can't persuade somebody of your point of view if all you're doing is making up motives and attributing them to those you disagree with. The other person always knows you're full of it when you do that.

Here's some other stuff I've written on this subject:

A quick and dirty argument against abortion - Here, I made the pro-life argument about as succinctly as I could. See if you see anything religious in there.

What is the unborn? - The humanity of the unborn is the primary reason people are pro-life. Many pro-choicers think the idea that life begins at conception is a religious point of view. See if there's anything religious in my argument.

Motive-mongering in the abortion debate - This is a complaint about the irrelevance of motive mongering both pro-lifers and pro-choicers engage in.

Two pro-choice myths - Here are two other myths pro-choicers believe.

Is it anti-semitic to say that Christ is king?

I don't know much at all about Candace Owens other than the fact that she used to work at the Daily Wire and was recently fired for some disagreement having to do with Israel and the current war. I don't think I've ever listened to any of her commentaries. So this blog post is not intended to be a defense of her.

What I want to address, instead, is some buzz I've been hearing around the internet that she recently tweeted that "Christ is king," and a bunch of people interpreted that as being anti-semitic. Now, I understand politicians and "journalists" say stupid things when politics or political talking heads are involved, but this seems to go beyond that. Browsing through the comment section of this video I saw that there were a lot of people who actually agree that saying, "Christ is king," is anti-semitic. It isn't just politicians or "journalists" saying it. It's every day people.

Besides being wrong, this strikes me as being downright stupid. It just makes me shake my head because it seems like our whole society gets dumber every year. There's always some new stupid idea that goes viral, then becomes normal. I always wonder what's next, so I want to speculate a little on where this might be going.

First, let me say something about the claim that Christ is king. This is somewhat of a tautology. All the kings of Israel were anointed king. One example is in 2 Samuel 2:4 where, "the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah." In Europe, people used to be crowned king, but in ancient Israel, people were anointed king.

The Hebrew word for one who was anointed was mashiach, from which we get the word, Messiah. The Greek word, christos, means the same thing--one who is anointed. It is from the word for anointed that we get Jesus' title, Christ.

Jesus was called the Christ, aka Messiah, because he was thought to be the fulfillment of God's promise to always have a man on the throne of Israel. Jesus was also called a son of David. He was thought to be an heir to the throne. That is what messianic expectations was all about. To call Jesus the Christ just is to say that he was king. Calling him Christ is essentially the same thing as calling him king.

In fact, that's what got him crucified. He was crucified for claiming to be "the king of the Jews," as all four gospels tell us.

Christianity gets its name from Christ. The fact that Jesus is the Christ is absolutely central to Christianity. It's the one thing all Christians agree on, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, or whatever. Even the fringe groups, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, agree that Jesus was the Christ. In Revelation, he is called "king of kings, and lord of lords" (Revelation 19:16).

Since Jesus being the Christ means the same thing as Jesus being king, the claim that Christ is king is definitional to Christianity. If you do not believe Christ is king, then you are not a Christian. A Christian who does not believe that Christ is king is like a husband who isn't married.

If saying that Christ is king is anti-semitic, then merely being a Christian is anti-semitic. I wonder if that's the insanity we are going to have to deal with in our culture next--that people will be called anti-semitic merely for admitting to being Christian. After reading a lot of the comments on that youtube video, it would not surprise me if that's where we're headed.

We live in silly times, and it's only getting worse.

I should add that there may be context to the Candace Owens drama that sheds light on the situation, adds a twist, or something. I haven't familiarized myself with it, and it isn't my intention to address it. I'm only addressing the belief a lot of people on the internet seem to have that saying, "Christ is King," is anti-semitic. All I know is that this subject came up because of a tweet Candace Owens made.

My annual Easter resurrection post - 2024

It seems like every year around this time, I think a lot about the resurrection of Jesus and resurrection in general. I wonder why.

Anywho, I had several ideas for what I would write about this year, and I've decided to focus specifically on the appearance to the 500 that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:6. Here's what he said:

After that He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep.

As a Bible-believing Christian who trusts Paul, I believe this event happened. But showing it happened to a person who might be skeptical of Paul or the Bible in general is a different matter. To show it happened, I'd have to make historical arguments without just granting that it's true merely because the Bible says so. There are arguments both for and against this event happening. Here are some of my thoughts on it in no particular order.

1. Paul's letters are the earliest writings in the New Testament. They date closer to the time of Jesus than anything else. 1 Corinthians is widely agreed to have been written around the middle of the 50's CE. This particular passage is also widely agreed to contain oral tradition that dates to within five years of Jesus' death, specifically verses 3-5. I do not think verse 6 is part of the oral tradition for two reasons. First, because Paul doesn't begin the appearance to the five hundred with "that" like he does the rest of the oral tradition. Second, because Paul makes a parenthetical statement about some of the people still being alive and others being dead. Since the appearance to the 500 isn't part of the oral tradition, we can't necessarily date it to within five years of Jesus' death. But we can certainly say that unless Paul made it up on the spot, it predates 1 Corinthians.

2. It seems unlikely that this would be the first time Paul mentioned this appearance to the Corinthians. He begins this section of his letter by saying he wants to remind the Corinthians of the gospel he previously taught them. Then he quotes the oral tradition which ends with the appearance to Cephas and the twelve. Then he cites the rest of the appearances, ending with the appearance to himself. Then he ends the section by saying, "Whether then it was I or they [i.e. the other apostles], so we preach and so you believed" (verse 11). So I get the impression that even though some of these appearances were not part of the oral tradition he quotes at the beginning, they are all part of the reminder of what he preached and what they believed. That means he probably told them about this appearance when he established the church, which would've been in the late 40's probably.

3. Paul says that some of the 500 were still living at the time of his writing 1 Corinthians, but some had fallen asleep (i.e. died). I find this parenthetical comment to be very interesting because it suggests that Paul knew who a lot of these people were. Maybe he even talked to some of them. A lot of apologists think this was Paul's way of saying, "If you don't believe me, you can talk to these people yourselves." The answer skeptics usually give is, "If that were the case, then Paul would've named some of them, but he didn't." I kind of side with the skeptics on that one. Paul isn't inviting anybody to check the claim out by interviewing the witnesses themselves. On the other hand, he is opening himself up to anybody saying, "Really? Well, who are they?" If Paul mentioned this appearance when founding the Corinthian church, it's hard to imagine nobody being curious about who they were, especially if Paul included the comment about some of them still being alive.

4. The parenthetical comment, I think, is the best reason to think this appearance really happened. The fact that we have such an early account of it is the second best reason.

5. One reason many are skeptical that it happened is because it's not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. Mark only narrates the appearance to the women at the tomb. He doesn't narrate any appearances to the disciples. He only has an angel telling the women that Jesus will appear to the disciples in Galilee. Mark ends there. There's a longer ending to Mark that is almost universally agreed to be an addition to Mark that wasn't in the original, so that appearance doesn't count. Matthew, Luke, and John all narrate appearances of Jesus to the women, the apostles, and in Luke's case, some unnamed people beyond the 11 apostles, though he doesn't say how many. You would think that if Jesus had appeared to 500 people at once, it would be significant enough for the gospel authors to have mentioned it. Their silence on the matters is often invoked as evidence against it happening. Surely, the argument goes, if it happened, the authors would've known about it, and if they knew about it, they wouldn't have left it out. This is an argument from silence, but as I've said elsewhere, arguments from silence can be sound arguments as long as there is some expectation that if something were so, it would be evident. So this argument from silence isn't fallacious. However, it can be outweighed by the evidence for the event in combination with a reasonable explanation for why the authors of the gospels and Acts might not have mentioned it. One explanation might be that the gospel writers intentionally focused on the appearances to the original apostles because they are the primary witnesses to the resurrection, and being a witness to the resurrection was a prerequisite to being an apostle (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:1). And as I said before, Luke lets us know that Jesus appeared to others beyond the core apostles, but he doesn't say how many. That leaves it open to being a group appearance of any large size. In the case of Acts, Luke says that shortly after Jesus ascended in front of the apostles outside of Jerusalem, they went back to Jerusalem and had a gathering in which Peter spoke to about 120 people. It's possible, though not certain, that these 120 people were with them when Jesus ascended. You'll have to read Acts 1:1-15 and judge for yourself. It's also possible Jesus appeared to 500 people, and only 120 were still hanging around Jerusalem when Peter gave his speech. Luke just doesn't tell us, but the passage leaves the possibility open.

6. It isn't that crazy to think Jesus might've appeared to 500 people at once even if you don't necessarily think Jesus rose from the dead. After all, Mary appeared to many people at Fatima. I just did a quick google search, and it said 70,000 people saw some solar event, but I couldn't find out how many people claimed to have actually seen Mary. However, I'm sure there were a lot. The group appearances of Jesus are often compared to Marian apparitions or sightings of Elvis. There are some major differences, though, that make me skeptical that they were the same kind of appearance. First, Mary seems to only appear in Catholic contexts, and Catholics don't believe Mary died. She was just assumed into heaven. Nobody seemed to think Mary had risen from the dead as a result of seeing her. I'm not sure whether they even thought she was physical. Second, there have been ten appearances of Mary that the Catholic church officially recognizes as being legitimate, ranging from the 1500's to the 1900's, and no reason to think there won't be more. In Jesus' case, there were a series of appearances that happened over a short period of time, then stopped. Luke says Jesus appeared multiple times over a period of only 40 days. Paul said all the appearances he listed happened before the appearance to him. He said the appearance to him was "untimely," which is probably an indication that it happened much later than everybody else's. It was probably also untimely in the fact that it happened after the ascension. In either case, the appearance to Paul was unusual, and it was the last. While we might be able to dismiss Marian apparitions as group hysteria or something along those lines, that seems an unlikely explanation for the group appearances of Jesus. Otherwise, we should not expect the appearances of Jesus to have been limited to such a short period of time after his death.

7. It's not that hard to imagine that many random people here and there might've claimed to see Jesus even if they didn't. Having seen the risen Jesus would surely give somebody bragging rights, so it would be more of a surprise if nobody made false claims of having seen him. I don't think that is a good explanation of the appearance to the 500 hundred, though, because Paul doesn't just say Jesus appeared to 500 people. He said he appeared to them at one time. Since Paul probably knew at least some of these people, it's likely he heard the story from more than one perspective. I wish he had said more about that. But having heard from probably multiple people, he had to have known whether it was a group appearance or not. It's possible, though I think unlikely, that after hearing a lot of random people all claiming to have seen the risen Jesus that Paul either assumed it happened in one big group, or he just said that to simplify the story. That seems unlikely because he didn't have to say "at one time." He could've just said he appeared to 500 people.

8. Five hundred people is a pretty specific number, too. There are degrees of specificity, of course. 511 is more specific than 500, which is more specific than "more than 500," which is more specific than "a few hundred," which is more specific than "a large crowd." If Paul just heard from a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places that they all saw Jesus, there would be no reason to attach such a specific number to it. I do think five hundred is a round number, though. Paul said, "more than five hundred people." Actually, Paul says, "500 brothers." Some translations say, "brothers and sisters," but "sisters" isn't in the Greek. The translators put it in italics because they think it clarifies Paul's thought. He was talking about people, not just brothers. I suspect he meant brothers, though. Since it's unlikely there would've been 500 brothers all in one place with no women around, the real number of people might have been a thousand or more. There were probably children, too. I'm speculating, of course. It would be interesting to know how Paul came up with 500 brothers. Is that his own estimate after hearing from a lot of people, or did everybody he talk to tell him there were 500 brothers? What if the various people he talked to each gave him a different estimate? Maybe some said, "There looked to be 400 men," and some said, "There were probably a thousand men and women there," and Paul just figured about 500 brothers. Who knows? Paul's use of a specific number, even if a round number, adds credence to the notion that there really was a large group appearance rather than random isolated people claiming to see Jesus. After all, Paul most likely got this information from talking to multiple people, and it seems more likely that the 500 number came from some of these accounts than that he just pulled it out of thin air or made a wild guess.

9. Besides, if there were random people claiming to have seen the risen Jesus just because it gave them bragging rights, then again, there would be no reason for these alleged appearances to have stopped after such a short period of time. Just as in the case of Marion apparitions, you'd expect people to continue claiming to see the risen Jesus for centuries. You might think the ability to claim you saw Jesus would be limited by the fact that he ascended to heaven after 40 days, but if that were the case, then Paul would not have been accepted as an apostle. Anybody who accepted Paul as an apostle had to believe it was possible for Jesus to make an appearance after the ascension, and there would be nothing to stop them from claiming to have seen Jesus themselves. Yet apparently nobody did. It doesn't look like people were just randomly claiming to see the risen Jesus for the sake of status, ego, power, or bragging rights.

Since I believe Jesus appeared to the 500 because of my belief in the authority of the Bible and the apostle Paul, it is hard for me to be objective when looking at the historical evidence apart from my these presuppositions. But to the extent that I am able to be objective, I think the historical reasoning I've explained above is sound and that historically, it's more likely than not that Jesus appeared to a large group of people that one would not be unreasonable in thinking numbered in the hundreds had they been there. I also think the appearance of Jesus was qualitatively different than Marian apparitions or Elvis sightings. Otherwise, it would not have been interpreted as a resurrection appearance by seemingly everybody who was there.

With that said, happy Easter! He is risen! And he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And I am very thankful for that.

Here are my posts from previous years:

Easter post from 2023
Easter post from 2022
Easter post from 2021
Easter post from 2020.
A post that's relevant to this one because it talks about the oft-repeated slogan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

That Christ died for our sins

With the exception of Romans, Paul wrote all of his general epistles to churches that he had established in various towns--Corinth, Phillipi, Galatia, Thesalonica, etc. When you read these letters, you have to read them with that in mind. Paul isn't writing these letters to introduce these churches to Christianity. They've already been taught the basics of Christianity. What he is doing is answering questions that have since come up, addressing issues that have come up, or reminding the churches of what they were previously taught. All of these letters are written against a background that his audience is already familiar with.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wants to remind them of the gospel he preached to them when he first organized their church. This is the central message of Christianity. It's the kerygma (i.e. proclaimation) of the gospel in a nutshell. He says:

Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received. . .

That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and
That he was buried, and
That he was was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and
That he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

That first line, "That Christ died for our sins," codifies a mountain of theological content. I want to unpack some, but not all of it, in this post.

First, the term, "Christ," comes from the Greek word, christos, meaning "annointed," or "one who is annointed." It's equivalent to the Hebrew for messiah, and to make a long story short, it's a way of saying that Jesus is the promised king of Israel who was prophecied by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other Old Testament prophets to usher in God's kingdom on earth.

Second, "Christ died," is a reference to the crucifixion. Most of us these days do not recognize what a startling claim that is because we have 2000 years of Christian history to get used to the idea. But as Paul said earlier in the same letter, "Christ crucified" was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). It's a stumbling block to Jews because the messiah was the person who was supposed to usher in an era of peace and prosperity in Israel, and to free the Jews from foreign oppression, not to die at the hands of the oppressors in apparent failure. In the case of every other messianic movement in the first century, the death of the messianic candidate ended the movement immediately because it proved that the person wasn't really the messiah. The claim that "The Romans crucified Israel's eschatological king," would have sounded like complete nonense to a Jew who looked forward to the messianic age. "Christ died" would have sounded like a contradiction in terms. That is why it was a stumbling block to Jews. Yet the Christians, many of whom were Jews (and originally, all were Jews), proclaimed this fact right in the core of their message. A lot can be said about that, but I want to go on to the next part.

Third, the mountain of theological content I alluded to earlier is embedded in the phrase, "for our sins." Sin is an offense or wrong committed against another person. In this context, it's a violation of God's standard of moral goodness. Essentially, to sin is to violate the moral law. James put it this way: "Anyone who knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it sins" (James 4:17). John put it this way: "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4). If you know the good you should do, but you don't do it, or if you know the bad you should avoid, but you do it anyway, you have sinned. Sin and immorality are essentially the same thing.

Just as violating the civil law incurs a penalty, violating the moral law also incurs a penalty. Both the Old and New Testaments make reference to a time at the end of the age when God will judge mankind for their sins. It is said that he will pour out his wrath against sin at this time. It is hard to say what will literally happen since the Bible often resorts to metaphor to describe it, but it is sometimes contrasted with eternal life. For example, Daniel and Matthew put it like this:

Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. ~ Daniel 12:2

These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. ~ Matthew 25:46

Since everybody does sin, we are all subject to the wrath of God. To say that Jesus died for our sins means that the punishment we had coming to us was poured out on him. He is our substitute. Our sins were imputed to him on the cross. He paid the penalty for our sins.

At the same time, Jesus' righteousness is imputed to those of us who have put their trust in him as our savior. When we stand before God on judgment day, we will stand before him clothed in the righteousness of Christ because we cannot stand before God on our own merits. We would be destroyed if we did. It is in this way that Jesus saves his people. The righteousness we have because of what Jesus did on the cross is what opens the door to eternal life for those who believe in him. What it boils down to is that our faith in Christ is counted by God as righteousness. By shedding his blood on the cross, Jesus made peace between us and God. We no longer stand condemned, and we are no longer under the wrath of God because of our sins. We are saved.

As I was writing this, it occurred to me that I could pepper the whole thing with scriptural references and discuss each one, but if I did so, this would end up being a book-long discussion. In fact, volumes have been written on this subject. Christians don't even agree on all the details. There are different theories of atonement--the question of how exactly Jesus' death on the cross accomplished salvation for sinners. I did list some of the scriptural references in my post on Christian universalism if you want to check that out.

This post probably raises the question of why "Christ crucified" isn't a stumbling block to Christians. After all, the messiah has allegedly come, yet the world is still a mess. The age of peace and prosperity hasn't come. How can Jesus be the messiah if he was killed by the very people the messiah should have prevailed against--Israel's occupiers, the Romans?

While the Old Testament tells us that the coming of the messiah would be accompanied by the fulfillment of all the lofty promises God made to Israel, Jesus' death on the cross explains how it would happen. As I explained in "Judaism vs Christianity," sin is the reason the Jews were exiled instead of living peacefully in the land God promised them forever through Abraham. Sin was the reason the Temple was destroyed and Israel lost its king along with their sovereignty. Yet God promised to restore all of these things. Only by dealing permanently with sin can these promises be guaranteed forever. Without a final solution to sin--a once for all sacrifice that does not need to be repeated--there cannot be a permanent era of peace and prosperity because there would be no reason for why sin wouldn't result in history repeating itself. What Jesus accomplished on the cross was the final solution to the problem of sin which makes the fulfillment of God's promises possible (see Hebrews 10 for more on this). The crucifixion of Christ is the mechanism by which Christ is able to usher in the kingdom of God on earth along with the fulfillment of God's promises for eternal life, eternal peace, and eternal prosperity.

Today is Good Friday--the day we Christians recognize Jesus' death on the cross. I was inspired by that and a post I read this morning by Wintery Knight to write this post.

Won't eternal life get mind-numbingly boring after trillions and trillions of years?

I think most people in history have found the idea of eternal life to be appealing. The alternative is that we die at some point or at least cease to exist, which is unappealing to most people.

The idea of living a long time is appealing as long as we imagine that we're in good health, never get old, and things are going our way. We expect that in God's kingdom when we've received imperishable resurrection bodies, and there's no more sickness, pain, death, sadness, etc., that we'll be pretty happy. But it's hard to imagine that we'd be happy in the long term. I mean really long term because if we're talking about never-ending life, then it will go on for trillions and trillions and trillions and . . . of years.

While many people might find a very long life of health and prosperity to be appealing, the idea of eternal life, no matter how wonderful conditions might be, is frightening. It will become a hell merely becasue of the length of it.

I remember when I was younger I used to answer this objection by imagining that there's no end to God's creativity in keeping us entertained and happy forever. A God who is all knowing and all powerful will never fail to keep life fresh and interesting. But even if there were a theoretical limit to the kinds of things and situations God could create to keep us amused, he could simply use his omnipotence to zap us with contentment, and he could do this continuously throughout eternity. In that case, our joy wouldn't even require external stimuli.

Some people answer this objection by pointing to the timelessness of heaaven. If time doesn't even exist, then there's no way to ever get bored over a long period of time. First of all, I doubt it's true that there's no time in heaven. Second, and more importantly, I believe in a physical resurrection, and that certainly entails a temporal existence.

These days, however, I see our joy as consisting more in experiencing and apprehending God himself than in God zapping us with joy or constantly creating new good experiences for us to have. Imagine something you've seen that was magical and wonderful, like a total eclipse, a scene from _Life of Pie_, a magnificent work of art, a mountain, a lightening storm, the Milkyway Galaxy on a dark night away from the city. Or imagine things you would like to see in real life that have been drempt up in fiction, like a million fairies all simultaneously taking flight in the dark, or whatever. There are many exquisite things that have been seen or imagined that would be a wonder to behold, and that's just visual perception. We're also moved by stories, music, physical touch, love, friendships, and donuts.

Any of these things, no matter how wonderful we can imagine them to be, would probably become boring after trillions and trillions of years. But I don't think God would be. God is not only the most beautiful, wonderful, holy, sublime, and great being that exists, but he's the most glorious being that could exist. I don't think we have the capacity to fully imagine what such a being is like. He exhausts even our capacity to appreciate him.

What I suspect is that God is so layered and so multi-faceted that there is no end to the glory that we might experience and apprehend when we are in his presence. I suspect that God's glory (everything that is true and wonderful about him) is inexhaustible. I don't think we have words to describe him fully or concepts to imagine him fully. We have a tiny glimps of him through what he has revealed to us by way of Scripture, reason, and intuition. I think eternal life will be never-ending joy because of being in the presence of God. It is God himself, the worship of him, and the enjoying him forever that will wipe out any possibility of eternal life becoming tiresome or boring. We will never exhaust the glory of God.

I suspect this may be hard for some people to believe because you're trying to imagine the unimaginable. If you can't even imagine a being so wonderful and glorious that merely being in his presence would be sufficient to make etneral life a never-ending joy, then it's hard to imagine that it's even possible.

I think it's not only possible, but it's the reality we live in. The answer to questions like, "What is the meaning/purpose of life?" can be found in Yahweh - the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. Everything exists for him and because of him, and in him all things hold together. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. It's all about him. It makes sense that Paul would say, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatewver you do, do all things for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). That's what it's all about. Even Christians, myself included, get distracted and fail to live up to the lofty goal of allowing our desire for the glory of God to be the motive behind everything we do, but I think ultimately that is where we will find our greatest joy in eternity.

Why you should be blogging or YouTubing

It looks like blogging isn't as popular as it used to be. YouTubing has become more popular. I still prefer blogs over YouTube videos.

If you're trying to improve your knowledge and understanding about the various topics surrounding Christianity and Christian apologetics, you really should be blogging or YouTubing. It is possible to read a whole book with your mind in neutral and remember almost nothing of what you read. But if you have to explain it to somebody else, then you have to learn it. If you are introduced to a new idea in a book you read, it's a good idea to blog on it because blogging on it forces you to understand the idea. You may find that in the process of writing the blog, you have to go back over what you read a few times as a reminder. Engaging with the ideas in this way will make it stick in a way that it wouldn't have if all you did was read about it.

Blogging has the added benefit of allowing you to engage with other people on the topics you are learning about. If you're lucky enough to have people comment on your blog posts, you'll be forced to think even harder about the subject because you'll want to respond to those comments in a thoughtful way. Even if you don't respond, you'll at least get to see a different take on the subject, and you'll get some feedback that reveals how well you understood (or misunderstood) the topic and how well you were able to communicate your thoughts on it. All of this engagement will make the information you're learning about stick even better. It will also improve your ability to communicate clearly.

If I'm reading a book that I plan to write about later, I take notes. Taking notes also makes the ideas stick. It's crazy, but I remember quotes from books I read a couple of decades ago because I took notes and because I used the quotes in things I wrote later on. When I take notes, I include both quotes and summaries. Quotes are useful if you plan to write reviews or use the book or article as a source later on, but writing summaries is really useful for both understanding and memory. You'll want your summaries to be accurate, so you'll be forced to read carefully enough to understand what you are reading. If you can accurately summarize a passage you are reading, you should understand it well enough to explain it to somebody else.

I encourage you to blog or find some medium that involves writing. I know a lot of people are reluctant to blog because they think, "Who am I to pontificate on this subject or tell other people how things are as if I know something?" I had that same thought when I started this blog. But the purpose of this blog wasn't primarily to inform the world. It was to hone my own noetic structure--to express myself in the hopes of getting feedback and pushback so that I could improve intellectually. You don't have to put yourself out as an expert on a subject to justify writing about it. It's just a blog after all. You can use your blog to bounce ideas off of other people.

But blogging is also a release when you have a lot of pent up thought and imagination running through your head after reading something, and you're just dying to get it off your chest.

With that being said, you don't have to be an expert on a topic before your opinion is valuable. People often have interesting things to say about topics that are new to them. Everybody is entitled to having a point of view, however ill-informed it might be. If you had to be an expert on a topic before you were justified in expressing a point of view, there would be no reason for most of us to ever have interesting conversations with each other about these things. I'm often curious what people think about a topic when they are not experts. I'm often curious what people's initial impressions are upon first hearing about something or having it explained to them. A lot of my blog posts are just that--intitial impressions upon first being introduced to something.

YouTubing may be useful in the same way that blogging is, but I really think writing is better. If the way you YouTube involves writing scripts, then I suppose that's just as good since you are writing.